That Pensacola should have been involved in that struggle would seem to be out of the natural order of events, when it is remembered that Spain and the United States were at peace. But, as before intimated, there existed a covert hostility on the part of the Spanish officials at Pensacola against the Americans, growing out of the dispute as to the limits of West Florida; and now intensified by the capture of Mobile on April 13, 1813, by an expedition from New Orleans, under the command of General Wilkinson. Spain herself was too much absorbed by her struggle for existence to take any active interest in a question of boundary in the new world. But the British, who were her allies in her war with the French, availed themselves of that official hostility to induce the Spaniards at Pensacola to permit them to make that place a base from which the Indians could be furnished with supplies to wage war on the United States. After the capture of Detroit, in August, 1812, the British formed the scheme of combining the Indians on the western frontier of the United States in a line of warfare extending from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. As their chief emissary to accomplish that end, they employed Tecumseh, the great Shawnee Chief, who in the fall of that year made his appearance amongst the Seminoles and Creeks. He at once began the work of exciting their hostility against the Americans, by every argument, art, and device which his own savage shrewdness could suggest, or the deliberate calculations of his British allies prompt. He addressed the Creek assemblies with the burning words of an impassioned oratory, to which his stately form and commanding presence gave additional force. He upbraided their disposition to adopt the speech, the dress, and habits of the white man, instead of cleaving to those of their forefathers. He persuaded them that it was degrading to an Indian warrior to follow the plow, or to rely upon cattle and the fruits of the field for sustenance; that it was decreed by the Great Spirit that the country should go back to the forest, and that the Indian should depend upon the chase for his food, as his forefathers had done. An invidious contrast was drawn between the disinterested friendship of the British, who had no occasion or use for their lands, and the cupidity of the Americans who were annually restricting their hunting grounds by their ever extending settlements. Superstition, and necromancy, too, were successfully employed to enforce his teachings. Some of the wavering, like Francis, afterwards known as the prophet, were induced to submit to days of seclusion and fasting, in houses from which the light was excluded, until darkness, spells, and incantations, acting upon bodies enfeebled by hunger, inspired faith in the mission of the great Shawnee. A comet, which appeared in the last days of September of that year, was pointed to as a sign placed in the heavens by the Great Spirit, as a presage of